The State of Solid State Storage

It wasn’t that long ago that the experts told us solid state drives would replace high-speed disk drives. Some vendors, probably in hopes to fulfill their own prophecy, guessed that this would happen before the end of 2010. While it’s not likely that we’re going to see the death of HDD any time soon, SSDs are on the rise. Many people now believe that SSDs will serve a more complementary role to HDDs, rather than replacing them altogether, at least for the foreseeable future.

Benefits of SSDs

SSDs offer organizations a viable storage solution. The most attractive part about SSDs has to be their speed. There is no comparison between a HDD and an SSD. SSDs have no spinning parts, which means that seek time is next to nothing. Even the fastest HDDs can hit around 300 reads per second, while SSDs range between 5,000 and 20,000 reads per second.

Because SSDs have no moving parts, there is no risk of mechanical failure. They’re also not as susceptible to heat or humidity as HDDs, which makes them idea for more rugged or extreme environments. They also use about half of the power of a comparable HDD.

What’s Not to Like

There are some drawbacks to Solid State technology, of course. The biggest of those is price. You’re looking at paying between 5 and 10 times the price for a drive with comparable capacity when comparing with a HDD.

Writing is an issue for SSDs, too. Their write speed is slow – relative to their read speeds. Using parallel architecture can help this problem, but it doesn’t solve it. Add to that the fact that the SSD cells can only be written a limited number of times, and you’re looking at a higher rate of replacement for most implementations.

When Solid State Makes Sense

SSDs do make sense in some situations. If you’re talking about an enterprise environment where speed, energy and durability are more important than cost, for example, you need solid state.

An example might include the SSDs included as onboard storage for HP BladeSystem Servers. The environment is hot and it’s limited in its space. It just can’t support HDDs. Another example would be applications that need quick access to data, such as those that use fast image rendering.

What’s Ahead?

SSDs give you around 100 times the access speed to your data for only 5 times the price. It won’t be long before the enterprise can realize a ROI when investing in SSD. Few people want to really step out on a limb, however. Data center managers know that, in tough economic times, a decision to increases costs can be fatal to their career. Mass adoption is probably a few years away, largely for this reason.

Relief from Data Storage Overload

For many companies, success in the "information age" means information overload. Data Storage requirements are exploding - whether it's the amount of data, the number of users, or the types of data being stored. For CIO’s,that means data storage needs are starting to monopolize IT budgets and resources.

Unitiv, Inc., is a professional provider of enterprise IT solutions. Unitiv delivers its services from its headquarters in Alpharetta, Georgia, USA, and its regional office in Iselin, New Jersey, USA. Unitiv provides a strategic approach to its service delivery, focusing on three core components: People, Products, and Processes. The People to advise and support customers. The Products to design and build solutions. The Processes to govern and manage post-implementation operations.